In this episode, we continue to explore the description, imagery, and teachings of spiritual realms. We begin with a focus on the use of “hades” and “sheol” in the Biblical text. Then we explore the modern notion of heaven as a golden ticket to paradise. How do the modern notions compare with Biblical reality? We will talk through the differences, the similarities, and the lessons therein. The way we perceive these heavenly realms impacts the way we live our daily life on this Earth, the most immediate of the spiritual realms.
Transcription:
Introduction
Today, we’re going to continue our study of hell and the future and what’s ahead of us in the future, our prophecy sequence here that we’re in. In the last lesson that we had, we talked about one of the three major hell places, if you will. And today we’re going to talk about the other two.
So the three places that are involved with the discussion of hell, and we usually get them all muddled up, is Gehenna, Hades or Sheol, and the lake of fire. These are the three major pieces of terminology you really have to sort out if you’re going to study this and actually hear what the Bible has to say.
Review
Now, last time, we focused in on Gehenna, and we saw that it is actually a shortening for Gai, which is valley, and Ben, son of, and Hinnom. The Valley of the Sons of Hinnom. It’s a literal valley. It’s still there today on the one side of the snow-cone looking structure that is Jerusalem; and on the other side is the Kidron Valley. You’ve got Gehenna on one side or the Valley of Hinnom, Hinnom Valley, and Kidron Valley on the other.
This Hinnom Valley was the place where they did sacrifices to Moloch. It was the downwind portion of the city where all the muck and sewage from the city was swept, where they threw the dead carcasses. They would typically have it lit on fire.
You’ve got this picture of worms and fire and corruption and, additionally, wickedness that is this picture of Gehenna.
We looked at Jeremiah 19 where Jeremiah takes the elders to this Potter’s gate, which is one of the gates; and it’s the gate that overlooks the Valley of Hinnom. In Jeremiah 19, Jeremiah says this valley is not going to be called Tophet anymore because Tophet was another word for Gehenna. Tophet means drums. The reason they called it Tophet was because when they would sacrifice children to Moloch by placing them in this red-hot iron idol, they would beat the drums to drown out the crying.
He says this is not going to be called Tophet any longer; it’s going to be called the Valley of Slaughter because I’m sending Babylon in, and there are going to be so many deaths, they’re not going to be able to bury them all. They’re just going to pile them up in this valley.
This is a very vivid picture of death, destruction. This is used in the scripture as a picture of what sin does. I would claim it’s a generic picture that you then, by context, have to understand what is being talked about here. It’s typically, instead of put in Gehenna, it’s typically translated hell. But I think that’s actually a mistranslation. That’s my view.
When Jesus is telling the disciples, “hey, you need to make sure you take care of these children because if you don’t, it’s better that you have a millstone tied around your neck and be thrown in the sea than mislead people and go to Gehenna.” And he’s talking about this valley.
So what does that mean to them?
Most certainly, if you look at Paul talking about sin, the wages of sin is death, he’s actually in a discipleship passage when he says that; and it’s true for all of us. If Travis were to decide to leave Denice, that would create a lot of death. Maybe a physical death. I don’t know. Denice is pretty feisty.
Sin brings death. Death is separation; and when we sin we create all kinds of separations. And that’s a current reality. Part of this picture is to help us understand how immensely damaging sin is to us in this life.
What does Gehenna have to do with the next life, and what about Hades, and what about the lake of fire?
We’re going to talk about that today.
Rich man in Hades begs for Lazarus
Let’s turn to Luke 16. We’re going to do what I think is the most vivid passage about this topic other than Revelation. Luke 16:19. I’m going to go through this a couple of times. It’s pretty short. Let me just read it first, and then let me give you some background, then we’ll go through it again.
Luke 16:19. “There was a certain rich man—this is Jesus speaking. There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day.
But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, full of sores, who was laid at his gate,
desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.
So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried.
And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
“Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’
But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented.
And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’
“Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’
Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’
And he said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’
But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’”
This is a vivid picture. What does it mean? Let me give you some background.
Hades and Gehenna are not synonyms
First of all, I think it’s important to understand something about this term Hades—Hades and Gehenna are not synonyms. Hades has a very specific definition, and it is being used here as a synonym for Sheol.
Let me show you some proof of that because after you understand what Sheol is, it may create a little bit of tension relative to what you’ve traditionally thought because a lot of what I’m going to be tell you today goes against what we’ve kind of traditionally been told about all this.
As I’ve said in this whole prophecy-thing, we’re going to focus on what we can know. Everything else is just a model. We’ll make sure we don’t miss the big point.
Hades and Sheol are synonyms
So let’s look at Acts 2:22. Peter’s sermon here. In Peter’s sermon, he says, “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know—
Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death;
whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it.
For David says concerning Him:
Now he quotes the Psalm.
‘I foresaw the Lord always before my face,
For He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken.
Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad;
Moreover my flesh also will rest in hope.
For You will not leave my soul in Hades,
Jesus is in Hades in this passage. This is a quote from Psalms 16. If we went to Psalms 16, the word that is used in Psalms 16 is the word Sheol. Peter quotes chapter 16 of Psalms that says Sheol, and when he quotes it to this group of Jewish men and women that he’s telling about Jesus and asking them to accept Jesus as their Messiah, he just substitutes it directly, substitutes Hades for Sheol.
A further proof that they’re synonyms is the Septuagint. The Septuagint is called that because, apparently, seventy scholars translated the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek. You can get a copy of it today. You can look online, and it’s a Greek manuscript of the Old Testament. I use an interlinear because I can’t read Greek. If you go look—the best I can tell, there wasn’t an easy tool on my thing where I could actually tell it for sure—but best I could tell, every instance of Sheol in the Old Testament is substituted with Hades.
Hades
Now Hades, in this world—this is a Greek-Roman world that we’re in here—Hades in this world was a very well- developed concept. If you go look at Greek mythology, Hades is an actual place. It’s a place where the dead go. It has all sorts of geography associated with it. There’s a river, Styx, and you have to cross this river. Most notably, there are two compartments: There’s a compartment where the righteous go, and there’s a compartment where the wicked go. And there’s a gulf between them, in Hades.
There’s other geography as well. There’s a field for the heroes and all this sort of thing. The good part is called Elysium and the bad part is Tartarus, I think.
It’s interesting here because if we go back to Luke 16, what Jesus is doing in Luke 16 is actually porting in this Hades concept; but he shifts some things.
Now I have a friend who grew up as an orthodox Jew, and he’s actually a Jewish rabbi. I asked him, what do the Jews think? What would the first-century Jews have been thinking about this? It’s very interesting. His comment back to me was kind of short; but it was very interesting. He said that the way the Jews thought of it, Hades and Sheol are the same thing. And Hades and Sheol was just the place where you go when you die. Everybody goes there.
Which compartment you’re in has to do with how you lived your life.
If you go to heaven, who’s at the gate in our world? Peter. Peter’s at the gate.
Who’s at the gate in the Jewish world? Abraham. So you’ve got the bosom of Abraham. The way they thought of it is that you’ve got Abraham actually guarding this gulf, and that’s actually part of what we saw in this picture here. And you can’t go through. He’s sort of got the keys, there, if you will.
There’s a really distinct difference here between the Jewish version. They still have the place of the dead and the two compartments. They don’t call this Elysium. What does he call it? Abraham’s bosom.
There’s another word that the Jews called it: paradise.
There’s actually one more that’s generally not in the scripture, but it’s used in the Talmud, and so forth: Gan Eden, which is the Garden of Eden.
There’s an understanding among the Jewish perspective that the Garden of Eden is reconstituted. We see that picture in Revelation, don’t we? “I’ll give to you to eat of the tree of life which is in the middle of the paradise of God.”
We have this Hades; we have this Sheol.
Sheol
Let me show you an Old Testament verse that shows that everybody expected to go to Sheol.
Sometimes Sheol is interesting because I think our culture is confused about this. Sheol is often translated in the New King James and other things with other words.
Genesis 37:33. And he recognized it and said, “It is my son’s tunic. A wild beast has devoured him. Without doubt Joseph is torn to pieces.”
Then Jacob tore his clothes, put sackcloth on his waist, and mourned for his son many days.
And all his sons and all his daughters arose to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted, and he said, “For I shall go down into the grave to my son in mourning.”
The translation—this sounds kind of funny, doesn’t it? Do you think of going to your grave with your son? They usually don’t bury people in the same grave. I guess in Israel they put people in the same tomb, so that could be it.
This is the word Sheol. What the translators tend to do is if it sounds sort of “hellish,” they’ll put hell in there. And if it doesn’t sound kind of “hellish,” they’ll put pit or grave. That’s what the translators did.
The LXX translators didn’t do that. They just put Hades. Really, it should just say Sheol because Jacob expects to go to Sheol and see Joseph there, in that particular case.
Jesus went to Sheol back in Acts 2; but he didn’t stay there. His spirit did not stay there. Why? Because he defeated death.
It’s important to note some things about this parable that Jesus is telling here. Let’s go back and look at Luke 16 now that you have this background.
It’s Sheol. Everybody’s in Sheol. As a matter of fact, where did Jesus say he was going to be the day he died? Paradise. Who was he going to take with him to paradise? The thief on the cross. That’s right.
This is Sheol. He’s going to Abraham’s bosom.
Rich man and Lazarus
Let’s go back and look at Luke 16:19. “There was a certain rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sumptuously every day.
What kind of life was the rich man living? A good life. He has a great benefit.
But there was a certain beggar named Lazarus—Lazarus means blessed of God—full of sores, who was laid at his gate,
desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.
So what kind of life is Lazarus living? Miserable. Is he getting any crumbs from the table? Not getting any crumbs. He wants the crumbs; he’s not getting the crumbs. What’s he getting? Licked by the dogs. What are the dogs getting? The crumbs. The dogs get the crumbs; Lazarus gets licked. You get this picture?
So it was that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried.
And being in torments in Hades—This is interesting too because Sheol and Hades are the same place; however, he’s using the word Hades to apply to the torment side and Abraham’s bosom to apply to the paradise side. Which, again, he’s got the same basic structure as the Greeks, but with very distinct differences.
The rich man also died and was buried.
And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.
What does that tell you about this place? You can see everybody, right? What else does it tell you? What does the Bible tell us about Abraham? Is he dead or alive? Well, he’s dead; but what does Jesus say? “I’m the God of the living.”
This is still Abraham. He hasn’t turned into some sort of spirit or other person or third party. It’s still Abraham. He’s still Abraham.
The rich man recognized Lazarus, didn’t he? So what does that tell us? You’re still yourself.
He remembers his brothers, right? He’s concerned about his brothers. What does that tell you? He still has his conscience. Isn’t that interesting?
“Then he cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.’
What does that tell you? It’s not a happy place, right? Do you want to go there? Jesus is telling this story. Is this where you want to go? This is not where you want to go.
But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted and you are tormented.
And besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.’
Abraham has the keys. That’s kind of the idea.
“Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house,for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’
Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’
He says, “No, no, no. That’s not good enough because they need to do something.” What is it that they need to do? Repent! They need to repent.
This is strange to us because we grew up with the idea that there’s this golden ticket that you get, and Jesus is kind of Willie Wonka. If you get the golden ticket, you get in; and if you don’t get the golden ticket, you don’t get in. And that’s really all there is.
Hades and Sheol are temporary places
This is a much different picture than that. It’s not just that. Because Hades and Sheol is a temporary place. It doesn’t last. Let me show you where it’s a temporary place.
Look at Revelation 20:14. To my knowledge, this is the only place in the scripture that tells you that Hades and Sheol are temporary places. The Jews understood that this was a temporary place.
Revelation 20:13. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. Hades could mean both compartments. I’m inclined to think it’s just the torment compartment since that’s the way Jesus used it. And they were judged, each one according to his works.
Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire.
The lake of fire is permanent
Isn’t that interesting? Hades is a temporary deal. Where does it end up? In the lake of fire. The lake of fire is permanent, best I can tell. We’ll talk about it next.
Purgatory?
The Jews, according to my orthodox friend, understood that this Hades was actually a temporary place. In fact, he told me that the Catholic idea of purgatory came straight from this Jewish understanding of Hades.
Now to us, as Protestants, the very word purgatory just sort of sends us into shingles. It’s just something you cannot consider. It’s just the worst of the worst, even possible to talk about. And there’s a good reason for that.
The doctrine of purgatory, as it was developed in the Middle Ages was exceedingly corrupt.
The basic doctrine that got developed—and let’s just use Sheol here as an example. If you live an unrepentant life—and this is the same thing that my Jewish friend told me the Jews understood—if you’re a believer and you live an unrepentant life, you go to this negative compartment, which they also call Gehenna—for a time. And this purges your sins. And so, this was a huge motivating factor for people.
Jesus here considers that this is sufficient enough of a picture to for you not to want to live a corrupt life, even though it’s temporary.
What the Catholics figured out is that this is such a huge motivating factor that they could raise a gazillion dollars off of it.
This is what men do.
They actually turned all the sacraments into fund-raising things. They turned the shed blood of Jesus on the cross for our sins into wafer sales. You go to church, and you don’t get to go to heaven at all unless you go and get that wafer every week. And when you do, they actually today still stick a coin-thing right in front of you.
You can’t have the wafer unless you’ve gone to confession. What happens at confession? You put the coins in the—yeah, you feed the priest.
Then to top it all off, they said you can actually buy your way out of this Gehenna. You can go ahead and live a wicked life like the rich man did. As long as you give sufficient money to them, you get a free pass, and you get to go out of torments and into Abraham’s bosom, so to speak. And you can live your life the way you want to, and it’s just a matter of money. They put it on a proportionate scale to your income. Isn’t that cool?
It was really corrupt. This is actually what triggered the Reformation. Luther in his thesis did not say you should get rid of all these indulgences altogether. He said get rid of the ones that are forever. Because you could actually pay enough money to where you got a lifetime fly-anywhere-you-want-to-on-American-Airlines sort of thing.
The “golden ticket” to heaven
This is kind of foreign to us because we have this idea if you get the golden ticket, then just everything’s good.
It’s created a lot of tension in my mind for a while. If I’m in, and when I get there, everything’s the same and nothing matters, then why would I want to live all this obedience and pain now? Why don’t I just get along and live my life as much like this rich man as possible and throw the beggars under the table and let the dogs lick them. Why would I want to do that?
That’s not the picture that the Bible really comes up with.
Now, this has actually become a topic that’s become fairly popular at least on the stuff that I read, and I don’t read extensively. The interesting thing to me is that people like me who believe hell is real—and I told you when we got into this, it’s going to be worse than you think, right? We tend to kind of say, “I don’t want to talk about this because I like the idea that they’re going to go to hell, and I don’t want anybody to get off.” That tends to be kind of the flavor of it.
And the people that I hear talking about this stuff, and that I read, they say the same things I’ve said; and then they come up with a totally different conclusion than I come up with: Since the old model that we were taught is wrong, then this new model must say it’s really not that bad, and we don’t need to worry about it.
My response to that is, “What?! What are you talking about?”
I’m going to give you a model at the end of this class today that I think is kind of wild. Again, the big point is clear. The model is just the model. Let’s not focus on the mechanics of how this works; we don’t know.
I’m going to tell you, from my standpoint, this model has not made me think of hell as a don’t-worry-about-it thing. It’s made me think about not only sin but also every decision I make in life, how much it matters; and to understand that pain in this life is actually a really a good thing if it comes through obedience. Because the alternative is pain later. That’s the picture I get from this.
